Innovations in diagnosing and verifying the level of success of treatment of disease have progressed from solely external imaging processes to include internal diagnostic processes. In addition to traditional external image techniques such as X-ray, MRI, CT scans, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), fluoroscopy, and angiography, small sensors may now be placed directly in the body. For example, diagnostic equipment and processes have been developed for diagnosing vasculature blockages and other vasculature disease by means of ultra-miniature sensors placed upon the distal end of a flexible elongate member such as a catheter, or a guide wire used for catheterization procedures. For example, known medical sensing techniques include intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), forward looking IVUS (FL-IVUS), fractional flow reserve (FFR) determination, Instant Wave-Free Ratio™ (iFR®) determination, a coronary flow reserve (CFR) determination, optical coherence tomography (OCT), trans-esophageal echocardiography, and image-guided therapy.
When an occluded blood vessel that requires treatment is identified, a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is a therapeutic procedure that can be utilized to treat the vessel. A PCI includes angioplasty and positioning a stent across the stenosis to open the vessel. Clinicians conventionally rely on angiography and physiologic measurements of pressure and/or flow, which are not meaningfully connected, to plan a therapeutic intervention. Planning the therapeutic intervention can include selecting various parameters related to the stent, such as positioning, length, diameter, etc. While the collected external cardiac test data, intravascular imaging data, and/or physiologic data can help in planning the therapeutic intervention, their efficacy is limited by the fact they exist as separate tests. For example, clinicians are unable to easily visualize where in the blood vessel the data was collected. Further, physiologic data and external cardiac test data are not integrated in a meaningful way that would allow a clinician to assess the effect of a PCI on, e.g., blood flow to the myocardium.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved devices, systems, and methods for assessing the severity of a blockage in a vessel and, in particular, a stenosis in a blood vessel. There also remains a need for improved devices, systems, and methods for planning a therapeutic intervention by connecting external cardiac test data, physiologic data, and/or intravascular imaging data in a way that allows clinicians to efficiently plan and evaluate the proposed therapy. Further, there remains a need for providing visual depictions of a vessel that allow a clinician to plan, evaluate, and change the proposed therapy in a manner supported by the collected data.